Emma and the Caterpillar

 

A wooden (well I suppose it would be in Norway) caterpillar for a weary Emma.

Fredrikstad

Today we're visiting Fredrikstad, our first town in Norway. En-route here, as we left the motorway, we pulled into a picnic area and discovered there was free Wifi - bonus! Three hours later, with the Blog, Facebook etc diligently updated we continued on to Fredrikstad.


Today's outfit is by George at ASDA, modelled by Emma.
 

The original entrance to the town was across an impressive drawbridge.
 

When the nearby town of Sarpsborg burnt down (that happened a lot with the wooden houses!) King Fredrik II allowed a new town to be built closer to the mouth of the Glomma river. This gave better access to the sea and an impressive defensive position.

The store house has 4m thick walls.
 

 

Some beautiful wooden boats on the river.

Sign of the Day

 

Literal translation - Here ends meet!

Norway at Last

This morning we drove into Norway, crossing the border on a minor road at Alingmoen. After all the hassle with the spuds and our limit of four bottles of cheap French plonk we were disappointed to find there was no official border crossing with armed guards, searchlights and vicious dogs!


Almost 1500 miles to get here and just a solitary sign - at least we can add a new country to our Trip Advisor Map :-)

Nossemark

We're really close to Norway now - in fact this afternoon we drove north with the border a few km to our left and lake Stora Le on our right. We still have a few potatoes on board so we can't go into Norway as you're not allowed to import them!

We stopped in a lakeside car park at Nossemark and cooked bangers & mash. We ate so many spuds we couldn't move so decided to stay the night here!

 

Our view tonight - another lake surrounded by pine trees!

Bengtsfors

This morning we are visiting the small Open Air Museum at Bengtsfors.


A food storage shed - mounted on wooden "mushrooms" to keep Roland out.

Inside the Soldier's house - each of the rich landowners had to provide and accommodate a "soldier" for local defence. We got the impression this was more for show as the soldier was actually just an ordinary farm worker. Even the gun was the responsibility of the landowner and was kept in the "big house". 

Dals Langed

As we couldn't stop overnight at Hobsbyn we moved on looking or somewhere to stay. As we drove past another lake at Dals Langed we spotted some MH's. It turned out to be a aire next to a marina (well, more of a pontoon and loo actually) so we decided to stop here for the night.


Alfresco dining - fajitas by the lake

Hogsbyn Rock Carvings

At the end of the canal we headed to a MH parking place next to a café at Hogsbyn only to find that overnight parking is no longed allowed here. This was rather unfortunate as we were low on water and hoping to be able to fill our tank here. Necessity being the mother of invention, we parked close to the toilets and used our long hose to top up.
 

The car park is next to some 3000 year old rock carvings showing people and boats.
 

Trees, a hand and some other squiggles - early Picasso perhaps?
 

The rock carvings have a lovely view of another lake - Sweden has quite a few of these!

Haverud Aqueduct

We left the aire at Trollhattan and followed a suggested driving route along the Dalsland canal.


The Haverud Aqueduct is 30m long and carries the canal across a valley. It was not possible to build locks in the valley due to the soft rock so the aqueduct provided the solution.

Trollhattan

We stopped last night at an aire in Trollhattan which is close to a staircase of locks which enabled boats to get from lake Vanern to the sea. The old wooden locks are no longer in use having been superseded by three much larger and deeper modern automatic locks.

  

The top set of locks had three chambers and replaced a 32m waterfall.

 The middle set of locks has four chambers and also drops around 30m

 

The bottom set of locks have had their gates removed so are now a waterfall.

 

Beautiful scenery, the lake at the bottom of the locks.

Pilane Graufalt

We actually came here to see the Iron Age burial mounds, standing stones and stone circles. After paying over £10 each for entry we discovered we were in an open-air art gallery!


The Lego Soldier
 

Some bits of rock piled up....
 

A piece by Tony Cragg (apparently he's a famous artist)
 

We lost the trail when the signs ran out and had a bit of a scramble to see this exhibit entitled "seat with a view"
 

Em makes the most of the view
 

At last we spotted some stone circles
 

 

More circles and standing stones.

Kiki and the Giant Rabbit

After breakfast we left Marstrand and continued North to the island of Tjorn which is approached over a very impressive neon-orange bridge. Unfortunately Em wasn't quick enough to get a picture so we found a giant rabbit instead.

 

 

Our View Tonight

 

The beauty of a MH is that you can change your view whenever you like - how's this for a view?

Marstrand

After Kungalv we headed West to the coast and the island of Marstrand. As we approached the town we spotted some other MH's in a car park so we joined them. Parking for the day and night was about £3 - a bargain!


Looking towards Marstrand from the car park.

Traditional boat in the harbour.
 

Em's arty shot!
 

We took the ferry across to Marstrand for the princely sum of about £2 return and discovered there was a round of the World Match Racing Tour going on.
 

 Some serious racing between the DS37 Match Racers.
 

 

After watching some of the racing we circumnavigated the island - all 6km or so. This is called "the squeeze" you have to walk sideways to get through!!

Kungalv

We left Gothenburg and started to head north. At Kungalv we paused to look at the 16th Century castle which is famous for never having been defeated.


Kiki's not interested in the castle....

 

Gothenburg

We arrived at the aire in Gothenburg around 9:30am, unloaded our bikes and headed into the city. Cycling into Gothenburg was easy with wide cycle paths which even had their own traffic lights! we abandoned the bikes by the railway station and continued a pied.



From this point onwards Emma will be referred to as "O Wise One" (the sign says "Wisdom is given to those who sit on this stone")
 

Poseidon (apparently he has a nice bum!) has become the symbol of Gothenburg.
 

The fish market - the local "wits" refer to it as the "fish church"
 

The locally known "lipstick" tower and the Barken Viking - built in 1906 and one of the few remaining four masted ships.

 

Sweden's Peace Symbol
 

Having spent all day in Gothenburg there was still no sign of Batman so we headed to Hard Rock for a couple of burgers.

 

Reflections

This afternoon we went for a short drive around the area before returning to the rastplats for another night. We're going to the aire in Gothenburg tomorrow and by getting there early in the morning we can have a whole day exploring and then leave the following morning.


A long row of letterboxes reminded us of Australia.

There was a small lake by the rastplats with a swimming pontoon stretching out into the deeper water. We decided against having an after dinner dip though.

It's 9pm and the sun is still out!

 

A Scandinavian Picnic

Our ferry from Frederikshavn left at 23:30 and arrived in Gothenburg at 02:40 - fortunately we found ourselves a comfy sofa and slept most of the way. After disembarking we headed East to a rastplats (motorway picnic area) about 25km away. We arrived at 03:30, squeezed in behind a row of MH's and went to bed. 

 

Next morning (or later that morning actually) we woke to showery rain and were amused to see how the Scandinavian's picnic in all weathers!

An Emma Special

After a change of clothing we settled down for a bite to eat. Unfortunately the lasagne "just jumped" off the tray as Em opened the oven door. We applied the 10 second rule, scraped it off the carpet and popped it back in the oven for a few more minutes.... At least if we're ill on the ferry tonight we can blame the Lasagne ;-)

The Top of Denmark

Before our ferry to Sweden tonight we've come to Grenen which is right at the very top of Denmark

The most Northerly Point of Denmark - you can see the two sea's meeting!
Despite the tourists who come on a bus pulled by tractor, this is quite a wild spot. On our way back to Kiki it poured with rain and we wished we'd joined the tourists in the bus.

Can you spot Kiki?

Dedicated MH parking for about £1.50 all day - the UK could learn a lot from the European attitude to MH's.

Sittenson to Tars

An early start today as we had a long drive ahead nearly to the top of Denmark.

After another day on the motorways we arrived at the "aire" which turned out to be a noisy motorway rest point with nothing more than a toilet emptying point!! Disappointed and not really in the mood for more driving, we reluctantly decided to carry on to Tars which was supposed to be a free aire behind a MH dealers.

Following the satnav directions, we left the motorway and turned left. We found this slightly strange because Tars was signposted to the right! Nevertheless we continued until we came to a narrow track which ended in someone's courtyard... There was no opportunity to turn round so we had to reverse 100m back to the road.

Having successfully extricated ourselves from the depths of rural Denmark we entered the road name instead of the GPS location into the satnav and headed back to the motorway roundabout to go the other way towards Tars.

Finally on arriving at the aire we discovered that they now charge €7/night but as we were shattered and it included free electricity we decided to stay. We wandered round the town, watched a couple of episodes of Spooks and went to bed. It was quite late but the sun was still shining!

We've driven 1066 miles from Devon and are very close to Fredrickshavn where we'll take the ferry to Sweden tomorrow night - the proper travelling starts here :-)